Saturday, March 20, 2010

Smart-Dart - Dartboard of the future with physics and motion tracking

Watching slightly drunk people playing darts at the Exeter is always like watching a knife thrower at Cirque de Soleil. The darts can easily go astray. We were planning to put the clicker out of job at the door by using blob-tracking to count people going in an out of the pub. Now we can also use similar techniques to track darts and sound early warnings if the dart is going to miss the board and hit the person sitting at the table a couple of metres away.

The tracking can also be used capture the flight and dynamics of the dart and suitability of different weight distributions for different people's throwing style and arm-strength. We can capture all trajectories and scores in cricket style. If the board location and calibration is accurate enough, then this technique in conjunction with some pressure sensors under the board can be used for automatic score keeping. Note I am considering a real and serious (read sharp-tipped) dart board not some electronic wannabe like the ones for soft-tip.